Evidence? Diplomacy? Statesmanship? Who needs any of that kind of thing when we have a Ministry of Truth telling us what to believe and whom to trust? So, let's all sit back, put the kettle on for a good ol' cuppa, and watch "the news" on telly and see what's going on in the world...

Waking up yet again to hear the BBC continue insinuating that Vladmir Putin is responsible, at least indirectly, for the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 17 - yet again appealing to the empty authority of one John Kerry...

I was recently a guest on Like Flint Radio, speaking with Garth Kennedy and Andie on the subject of the New World Order. In the "round table" discussion (the first I've done using this format) I draw from the many TMR interviews on that theme. The following is the description from Like Flint Radio:

A short video from the Corporate Europe Observatory reminds us that a key element in the advancement of the New Corporate-Fascist World Order is the so-called "free-trade" agreement. Warning about the proposed EU/US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [TTIP], or Transatlantic Free Trade Area [TAFTA]), they comment:

"A giant free-trade agreement is currently being negotiated between the European Union and the US government. Hidden within this deal are plans to include rules to give investors the right to sue governments. Many fear their inclusion presents a grave threat to democracy, public funds, and the development of public policy.

These rules, officially known as investor-state dispute settlement clauses, are found in many international trade and investment agreements, mostly signed since the 1990s. They give investors based in a country where the agreement was made the ability to sue another signatory state if its policies have resulted in reduced profits. Investors are increasingly using these clauses to sue governments for billions of dollars." *

Now that the US Justice Department's so-called "drone memo" [external PDF] is out (a remarkable result for the ACLU and New York Times that fought for its release), one might think that the US people might now be in a position at least to understand - if not agree with - the legal theories behind the Obama Administration's extra-judicial assassinations of US citizens.

This disturbing policy was made public due to a legal challenge brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Pakistani organisation Bytes for All, and five other national civil liberties organisations.1

As the "1%" continues to syphon off the aspirations of the "99%", it's hard to imagine that plans are not afoot to pre-empt and neutralise that widespread social unrest which the managers of this corporate-fascist NWO must surely suspect is coming. Enter Minerva: a research programme of the US Department of Defense that is funding universities to study the social dynamics of civil unrest across the globe - in essence a militarisation of the social sciences.

Much as I like polar bears (who wouldn't?), I can't help being suspicious that their cuteness and cuddliness (at a distance!) makes them ideal "victims" for the global climate change supposedly caused (in large part) by carbon-dioxide-producing human beings. Maybe I'm wrong; I'm quite prepared to be. But a recent blog post by Dr. Susan Crockford (zoologist with published work on the Holocene history of Arctic animals, and an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia) does little to persuade me so.

Is the War Machine impossible to stop? We sometimes imagine that it's impervious to public opinion, and that there's very little, if anything, we can do to change things. But in the view of Swanson, we may actually have more influence than we think...

Chris Hedges laments that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent rejection of an appeal in the case by prominent persons against the U.S. Government's N.D.A.A. of 2012 (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012) Section 1021(b)(2), means that the U.S. military's ability to arrest "U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process" remains in legal force.

Long-established film-maker Eric Stacey's new film, Unthinkable : An Airline Captain's Story, is a highly thought-provoking and disturbing dramatisation of the events leading up to, and following, the deaths of retired airline captain and 9/11 researcher Philip Marshall and his two teenage children in February 2013. Following the County Sherrif's conclusion that Marshall had murdered his children (and family dog) and then killed himself in a tragic "murder-suicide", journalist Wayne Madsen's investigation into the case led him to conclude that they had been the victims of professional killers.

Living here in the UK (as I do), I am reminded by Michael Krieger that I am likely to be recorded by CCTV cameras about 300 times every day (on average). Quite believable; they seem to have been erected all over the place in recent years - parks - road corners - walls - all, no doubt, in the fight against crime and terrorism in this obscure Lancastrian backwater.

In another MUST READ, Seymour Hersh analyses why Washington's proposed military intervention in Syria came to a halt, and considers the possible role of Turkey in the gas attacks within Syria that allowed Washington to make its case against Assad that he had crossed the "red line".

The question is simply this: How is it that NATO sources are saying that "some 35,000- 40,000 Russian troops are massed near Ukraine's eastern border... [with] tanks, mechanised infantry, and special forces... [and] the logistical back-up to keep them there for some considerable time", (BBC) when just a few days before Jim Maceda of NBC, who took his team over to the Ukrainian-Russian border to find out for themselves, reported that they found "no signs of military buildup"? Indeed, far from finding evidence of war, says Maceda, "what we found instead were war memorials." Are we to understand that all those 35,000 troops with all that back-up just managed to slip into place during those intervening few days?

In an illuminating exposé of the mainstream media's penchant for not 'telling it like it is', Paul Joseph Watson demonstrates how the Turkish government's leaked false-flag deliberations were turned by the media into a relatively inoccuous tut-tutting over YouTube blocking!

"Turkish government officials were caught red-handed in a leaked audio tape planning a false flag terror attack as a pretext to invade Syria, but the mainstream media completely buried the key aspect of the story and made it all about Prime Minister Erdogan blocking YouTube."

Tyler Durden reports on the recently-leaked conversation between Turkish military and political leaders in which they discuss what seems to be a false-flag attack designed to justify war with Syria. Apparently, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has implicitly confirmed the conversation as genuine by criticising those who leaked the information through YouTube:

"As geopolitical analysts from across the board explain, the Ukrainian coup has been deliberately provoked by outside agents to promote a combination of US, EU, NATO and IMF interests. Perhaps more worrying than the interference itself are its potential implications. As Russia's every move is now being scrutinized for a possible military response to the ongoing crisis, the specter of a larger military operation now hangs over Eastern Europe."